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Comment by noman-land | Hacker News Reader

The more I learn about various living beings around us, the more I'm convinced that they are all unique, individual people, with unique opinions and desires. They have unique DNA and unique personalities.

If you've ever spent an extended period of time with any animal, you know that they all have different personalities and opinions that differ from other animals of the same species, eerily similar to humans. They truly are different people. Some are shy. Some are gregarious. Some are brave. Some are lazy. Some are dumb. Some are mean. They're all different.

I don't really know how to reconcile this feeling and I'm very much an omnivore but the thought is inescapable to me.

In order for you to keep living, something with a unique personality, opinions, and desires has to die. And that includes plants.

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Thinking seriously about it:

Of course you can try to minimize the sentience of what you eat - wheat < ants < pigs < people - which may be better than nothing, but I'm sure you've thought of that.

I heard of a small religion that eats only nuts and fruits, with the belief that the plants want them eaten - they evolved to make the nuts and fruits desireable in order to spread the plant's seeds. It's arguably still exploitation: The plants evolved that way because it is the least bad option among predators.

If panpsychism is true, then even the molecules our bodies cleave apart during digestion could be sentient.

Alan Watts used to say, it's ok to eat plants and animals, as long as when you cook them, you make something beautiful out of them to respect their sacrifice. It's the least you can do.

I feel there is some truth to this. Eventually, your body will be consumed by insects.

I don't think those beings that were killed care about that.

They no longer care about things, being dead. Care is for the living.

The mindset is for your own benefit, not the dead thing you're eating.

Well it's an inescapable fact that anything alive is going to die, and likely be eaten.

Basically all animals, and even plants (living creatures too) are going to die horrible deaths, being ripped apart by predators etc. We too, will likely be food for worms.

The point he is trying to make is to celebrate the life of whatever you're eating by at least making something special out of it an enjoying it rather than turning it into fast food junk which pointlessly ends up in the trash after 10 minutes in the burger warmer or whatever.

It's a weird way to celebrate a life when you do it after killing it for your own pleasure. We should aim at minimizing pain, not at creating feel-good rituals for our meals.

What do you suggest people eat then? Air?

The context was, even killing plants is wrong, so we should cook and enjoy those to the best of our ability.

You can say "plants aren't self-aware" or something, but there's no way out of it. Plants might even be home for insects or other creatures which die when you take the plants. Plants are living organisms and you shorten a beetroots life when you tug it out of the ground.

I think the point still stands. Be grateful for each meal and do your best to enjoy and savor it. It's not about "celebrating killing" you injected that into it. It's about showing respect.

Minimizing pain means eating less animals with developed nervous systems and more plants.

You can make all the rationalisations you want and operate however you see fit, but Homo Sapiens Sapiens is an omnivorous apex predator of the highest order.

Meat eating and tool use, borne out of the need to maximise the amount of calorie-dense food available are the reason we are here today discussing the finer points of vegetarianism.

Instead of being a blind zealot, I try to understand that life is a series of paradoxes and compromises. Balancing the fact that meat is good for me while minimising suffering for any plant and animal that crosses my path does feel more human than altogether discarding evolution, our DNA and place in the ecosystem for a wishy-washy ideology that only exists for people leading rich and comfortable lives.

Vegetarianism is a fine and commendable personal choice, as long as it doesn't devolve in proselytism.

The simplicity of my position hardly invites rationalization or blind belief. Even if you assume plants feel pain, you would still end up agreeing that vegetarianism is the correct choice, since it still minimizes the pain that would be caused by feeding animals with wasted calories from plants. On the contrary, it's you who is attaching yourself to misconceptions about what humans require to lead healthy lifes, even when you know (I mean, you can't be that blind) that plant diets can be as healthy (or arguably even more healthy).

IIRC Alan Watts believed that were are all one being, living every life in sequence, at different points in time. So you would at some point be the same chicken you slaughtered.

It's been many years, though, since I listened to him. And I was usually focused on other things. That may have been just a supposition on another point.

How did you discover plants have unique opinions?

You could try to create an account for them on hn?

Is that moral justification for eating or stepping on the sentient being over the plant, just because they’re both alive?

If anything it's moral justification for not doing that. I was pointing out how I kill living things in order to remain alive, even though I think they are unique individual people and it's troubling and confusing to me (because in order to live, another thing has to die).

Unsolicited, but I just abstract it to energy.

I'm an energy well. They are an energy well. I can't hold off the march of entropy if I don't bring in more energy. So I absorb their well into mine.

Until we figure out how to integrate photosynthesis / photovoltaics into our bodies its not worth stressing out over the necessary survival process of killing other living things.

Well it is worth thinking about if one energy well suffers and the other one does not.

We have very little reason to believe that a bean plant is sentient and experiences suffering to a comparable level like a factory-farmed chicken. It actually seems absurd.

(I eat meat, this is not a holy war for me.)

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